See Slot’s full verdict on the encounter at his post-match press conference below…
On what he felt went wrong in the game…
The result. And the fact that we went 1-0 down so early. If you play United, with so many quality players they have – [and] brought in a few new ones this summer – and if they come to us in a low block, playing so many long balls, then the last thing you would want is going 1-0 down. Because that gives them even more belief. If you would have told me we are 1-0 down against a United team that played in the style they did, and you would have told me that we would create eight, nine, 10 open chances, then I would have said to you that I don’t think that is possible. But it was possible.
So, the second thing that went wrong is that from all the chances we got, we only scored one goal. I have said it in Holland many times and maybe I’ve said it here as well, it’s almost impossible to win a big game of football – and Liverpool v United is a big game with so many quality players on the pitch – to win it with a negative set-piece balance. We conceded another one and that led to us losing the game.
On whether he believes the first goal should have stood, with Alexis Mac Allister down with a head injury…
I think the main thing we should do now, I should do now, is not complain, blame or do these kind of things. We could have done much better after Macca was on the floor, we should have done better. But the healthcare of a player is something that is important and if a player needs to have four stitches, you would hope that everybody understands that he needs immediate treatment. But it didn’t happen. But, again, we could have done better, so that’s not the reason why we lost this game today – the reason is because we missed far too many chances to win a game of football.
Again, I’ve said it here many times and I’m hoping that I’m not just saying it to you but everybody understands this a bit better, we are not a team – which I see a lot in football – that goes to the floor pretending it’s a head injury so they kill the counter-attack. That’s not who we are. We never go to the floor, we always are a fair team. So if a player of us is then on the floor you would hope everybody would say, ‘It’s Liverpool, they don’t do these kind of things, so let’s blow a whistle.’ But, again, that’s not an excuse for us conceding the goal and that’s not an excuse for us losing this game of football.
On if he is concerned by confidence levels after losing four games in a row and whether this period is his biggest challenge since becoming a coach…
I think as a manager you face constantly challenges. When I just started, you face the challenge of being new manager and then you need to win games. Then when you do well you go to a bigger club and people are like, ‘Oh, let’s see how he does over there.’ Then you go to be the successor of Jürgen Klopp and people say this is the biggest challenge you ever faced. Now we have lost four times in a row and that’s also a challenge. So, the life of a football manager is an ongoing challenge. If you win games you want to keep winning, if you lose games you want to start winning again.
Do we lose confidence? I cannot see it yet, because every single game we’ve lost, we were able to create in the second half an unbelievable amount of chances. If you look back at all the three games we’ve lost in the Premier League, if you just put all the highlights [next to] each other, you would say it’s hardly possible that they lose this game. So if we can keep producing what we are doing and do a few things a little bit better, then there is every reason to expect that we start to win football games again. But I cannot promise you that on Wednesday evening we are again able to create eight, nine or 10 open chances. I hope so, and with the players we have then it will lead in the end to us scoring more goals.
Then there’s of course the part no-one asked about but I can tell you. Apart from the two goals we conceded, we have conceded maybe two or three more chances, but this is the struggle we are having being 1-0 down; then you need to take a bit more risk. And then I am even quite positive that we limit the opponent so much to the chances they are creating. Because we do take a lot of risk in the moment; after 55 minutes, I think we had six or seven offensive players on the pitch. That might also maybe not be an excuse but be the reason why the structure in defending a set-piece against [Crystal] Palace and now was not as perfect as we usually are, because normally you play with four, five, six defensive-minded players but at that moment we are on the pitch with seven or eight offensive-minded players. That’s not an excuse because they should do better, we should do better, but maybe it’s not a coincidence that exactly in those moments of time we concede a set-piece.
On whether it’s ‘small margins’ for his team, with Gakpo hitting the woodwork three times…
And scored a goal, Cody, and was in multiple moments. We only focused on the open chances we had but I saw crosses coming in close to being a chance. If you win then you can say the margins are small and people believe you. They say, ‘Yeah, but you are still winning’ and if you say it now people are like, ‘Ah, that’s not an excuse we would like to hear.’ But Harry Maguire had an even bigger and better chance last season at 2-2 over here that he missed, and now he scored. After that we had a Cody chance, apart from all the others he had, it was maybe not his biggest one, because the goal he scored was the biggest one. He almost hit the woodwork, by the way [with the header]. At this moment in time, I think it’s the margins you are talking about, but we soon have to prove that we can do better than what we are doing at the moment.
